Heat warms to fully mobile ticketing

Miami Heat has increased its mobile ticketing entry rate to 85 per cent of arena visitors less than a year after the NBA team announced it wanted to eradicate paper tickets and improve fan data gathering.

The Heat declared it was transitioning to a mobile-only policy in September 2017, not only to end the use of paper tickets, but also to collect data, according to Forbes.

The organisation created a department responsible for generating and managing content as part of a complete overhaul that went hand-in-hand with the mobile ticketing plan to help gather and use data.

“For a lot of it, we were just jumping in with both feet and trying to figure it out,” said McCullough, according to Forbes. “We have a pretty good idea of how it works now, and we are continuing to hire to really maximise social selling opportunity.”

The Heat last year teamed up with Rebel Ventures to help with the shift towards using ticket-holders data effectively.

McCullough told Forbes: “We saw where other NBA teams were successful with using digital content on a specific initiative and we started thinking that if they can do it with a one-off, what can we do if we really focused on having our marketing department fully content focused?”

According to Forbes, the Heat is looking to use its mobile app not only for arena entry, but also to make purchases such as concessions and merchandise to help expand its data gathering.

Currently, the data used by the Heat includes what time the user enters the arena, which gate they used for entry and what content they are looking at on the mobile app.

“We’ve become a more data driven organisation and want to understand the DNA of our fan,” said Lauren Cochran, who is the senior director of interactive media for the Heat.

“As of now, the Heat is not asking for fans’ blood types when they open the native mobile app, but anything is possible in the future!”

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